Some Favorites of 2009

Here are some of my favorite picture memories from 2009.  There are too many to post all at once so I will do this over a few posts.

Jacob meeting his new cousin, Colby

Jacob and Tony exploring the rocky beach and tide pools in California

Rub a dub dub three cousins in the tub.

Brooklyn "helping" Jacob with his juicebox

How much would you pay?

Apparently, you can purchase our little Jacob for $1. I took this picture back in July, but it cracks me up every time I look at it.  Jacob actually put this on himself. It is a price tag off of a little keyboard I bought from D.I.  

Terrible Twos

Jacob doesn't actually turn two until next month, but this last week he has adopted terrible two's attitude. I know that I will one day probably look back at this time of his life and laugh at all the crazy things he is doing, but for now I thought I would post them so all of you out in blog land can have a laugh today.  I  love my little monkey, but here are some examples of things he has done during the past week to try my patience. (It probably doesn't help that Tony has been out of town for 8 days)

1. He picks his nose EVERY time I look at him and picks both nostrils at once as soon as I tell him to stop
2. He takes off his diaper when I get in the shower.  Please note that he keeps his pants on and just shoves his diaper down into his pant leg
3. He refuses to eat more than two bites of anything unless it is made of cheese or chocolate
4. He copies everything I do.  Now sometimes this is really cute, but when he tries to copy me giving our dog Max his medicine, I get a little worried.  For those of you who have never had the pleasure of giving a 65 lb dog a huge pill, let me explain what it entails.  First you pry open their mouth then literally shove a pill down their throat.  Hopefully you can appreciate how potentially dangerous it can be for a toddler to try and shove things down a dogs throat.
5. He has decided that since we don't own a pony, the dogs are the next best thing and he is constantly trying to round them up and ride them.  Poor dogs
6. He tries to brush Abby's teeth with his toothbrush (again...poor dog)
7. He started walking in his sleep.  Aaaccckk!!  I don't know if this is necessarily a two-year-old thing or just an unfortunate result of being related to me.

Hopefully this will make someone laugh....and I'm sure that someday I will have the ability to laugh  about it too.

Rain

This morning when I was driving Jacob to daycare it was raining like crazy. Jacob looked at the rain and said, “Raining, momma?”

Me: “Yes, it’s raining”

Jacob: “Wet, momma?”

Me: “Yes, the rain is wet”

Jacob: “Washy hands?”

Me: “No, we don’t wash our hands in the rain”

So the remainder of our drive he kept saying, “Washy hands rain?.......Noooo.” And then he would laugh hysterically. Seriously, this little monkey of ours is hilarious. I guess it might not seem that funny, but you really need to have heard Jacob say this kind of ‘no’. He says it long and drawn out while pursing his lips together and squishing his face up. Hilarious…at least to me.

Skills

The other night I put Jacob to bed and left the room. A few minutes later I heard him call, “Mama!”. I didn’t really think too much about going and checking on him because he always calls for me after I put him to bed. A few minutes later, he called for me again and I decided to go to his room and check on him. Much to my surprise, he was straddling the crib railing and, of course, was very proud of himself. I put him back in his bed and told him to lay down, but he immediately repeated the trick. Needless to say, the next day we took off the crib railing and replaced it with the toddler rail.

The first night in his new bed he seemed to go down fine, but quickly realized he could get out of his bed. After putting him back in his bed 10 times, Tony finally just closed his bedroom door. We thought we were safe because he didn’t know how to open doors yet. We heard him playing in his room, but he went to sleep without any problems. The next day he figured out how to open doors. Luckily he has been really good going to bed and hasn’t come out of his room.

It is really weird to have him able to get out of his bed by himself. On Saturday morning, Tony and I were still laying in bed when Jacob got up and silently walked down the hall. I just caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye and it really freaked me out until I realized it was just Jacob. This is going to take some getting used to!

Europe..pictures to come

As many of you know, Tony and I recently took our first trip alone since little J was born. We went to various places in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. We had a great time and enjoyed having an actual (sort-of) vacation (that never seems to happen anymore since Tony works almost every weekend). I have been a little lazy and have not taken the pictures off of the camera yet, but I wanted to post a few things about our adventure before I forget about them. So, here is a list of humorous/strange/interesting things that we saw/experienced on our trip. Hopefully you will find this list helpful if you ever travel to Europe.

1. Train travel is great. We bought a rail pass before we went and essentially could go anywhere we wanted without having to drive and try to understand road signs in different foreign languages.

2. Train travel is great unless there is an electrical storm...If there is lightning, the electric trains seem to just stop (go figure) leaving you stranded and/or taking a 45 minute detour around the storm

3. Check the city calendar of the city you are going to BEFORE you go. For example, we ended up arriving in Cologne, Germany for a gigantic Gay Pride Festival. Now Tony and I are not haters, however we hate gross displays of public affection and sexuality regardless of sexual orientation. We saw enough....I'll leave it at that.

4. Old man public urination in pristine medieval city parks is gross, but kind of funny.

5. Teenage public urination on train station walls is just gross. We were on a train from Wuppertal, Germany to Cologne, Germany that was packed. I mean it was so packed I ended up having my face shoved into some sweaty guys pits for about 35 minutes (gross). This train was filled with tons of people going into Cologne for the Gay Pride Festival. People were drinking on the train and had to use the restroom...which was difficult to get to since the train was so packed. We stopped at some small station and several teenage boys jumped off the train and started taking care of their business against the wall of the station...the doors closed and we thought we were rid of them, but somehow they got back onto the train in a different car and rejoined us at the next stop.

6. Public puking onto the sidewalk is gross, and it doesn't matter who is doing it.

7. It is amazing how multi-lingual homeless bums can be.

8. Cities with good public transportation are wonderful to travel to

I have more things to tell everyone, but I will save it for when I have pictures.

Goodbye Old Friend

This week we said goodbye to an old friend: our 1992 Honda Accord LX. Aahh, the memories. (Tears welling up slightly). This is the car that Tony bought when he got home from his mission. This is the car we drove back and forth to Iowa probably 10 times. We have eaten, slept, and practically lived in this car. She has been all over the country with us from Chicago (I think that is as far east) to the California and Oregon coasts. We have never had any real problems with her, except when the distributor had a problem starting in Laramie, WY until we got her fixed in Iowa (That is around 700 miles!). This car has been a constant through our marriage and it seems strange to have her gone. I am not trying to sound overly sentimental, but I will miss her. I am not sure why I think of her as 'she'. Anyway, we sold the car to a nice family who needed a reliable and affordable vehicle. I hope that she will be good to them. She only has 159,000 miles, gets 27 mpg, and still has a lot of life left even though she is 17 years old.

FYI...she has been replaced with another Honda. This time we got a Civic to use on the long commute from the University to our house. I like the new car...I can hook up my ipod to the radio and I don't have to worry about it falling apart while I am driving. I am not sure if the new car is a 'she' or a 'he'.